Ep. 1 - "Origin Stories" with Dr. Felix Graham
I was in my senior year of an undergraduate vocal performance program, and I was beginning to audition for graduate schools. On my way to class one day, I bumped into a voice teacher that I really admired. I told her I'd be auditioning at her alma mater, the Eastman School of Music. She scoffed and said, you'll never get in there. She was right.
Speaker 1:I did not get into Eastman, but I did go to graduate school, and I also became a voice teacher. Hi. My name is David Sisco. My pronouns are hehim and welcome to my brand new podcast, Wholehearted Voice Pedagogy. This podcast is dedicated to the art and practice of teaching singers.
Speaker 1:It is an extension of my forthcoming book of the same title which will be released by Routledge Press. Today I'm going to share with you some origin stories, three moments that led me to write my book and start this podcast. The goal of both resources is to encourage voice teachers to develop healthy, boundaried relationships with students so they can do their best work. Simple. Right?
Speaker 1:Well, as we know, it absolutely is not. There are so many complex layers to teaching applied or independent voice students. I've been teaching for over 20 years, and I'm still trying to find out the best way to engage my students, each of whom has their own intersections of identity and experience and therefore requires a different tailored and supportive approach. How can we do that? In this podcast, we're going to look at how rather than what we teach.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk about the evolution of the student teacher relationship through the lens of the Master Apprentice model. We'll discuss contemporary opportunities and challenges facing today's students and teachers, such as changes in student learning and teacher stress. We'll talk about how to access curiosity, vulnerability, mindfulness, and self care in our daily teaching practice, and how to negotiate conflict in the voice studio. We're gonna talk about how to select repertoire with students and foster resilience through practice. Finally, we'll discuss and more likely debate the definition of artistry, discuss how to help students access it, and examine how to objectively assess student growth.
Speaker 1:We are gonna do all of this with the help of a special guest each episode. This week's guest is doctor Felix Graham, who I will be very happy to introduce you to in just a little bit. Is this podcast ambitious? Yeah. You could say that.
Speaker 1:But this is the education I know I need as an educator, as a teacher, and I hope it will speak to you too. By the way, what is wholeheartedness? I first came across the term as I think most of us did through the research and writing of doctor Brene Brown. In her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, she shares, wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, no matter what gets done or how much I left undone, I am enough.
Speaker 1:It's going to bed at night and thinking, yes. I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn't change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging. She also notes wholeheartedness is as much about embracing our tenderness and vulnerability as it is about developing knowledge and claiming power. I hope to outline how to activate the power of wholeheartedness as teachers and illuminate how it positively impacts students. I had a great learning experience in undergrad despite the response I received from that voice teacher I used to admire and another one who, outed me during opera workshop before I had even come out to myself.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That actually happened. Graduate school, however, was unfortunately not so great. For me, it was political and toxic to music making. Several members of the voice faculty inferred through their actions and comments that I was not a singer worthy of a vibrant career as a performing artist, and without possessing a constitution to contradict that narrative, I embraced it.
Speaker 1:This negative belief eventually manifested in my body, causing me to be plagued by chronic and debilitating sinus infections anytime I sang in public. This happened for well over a decade until one morning I woke up and realized I had completely lost my voice. I had 5 lessons to teach that day and a major performance that night which was being videotaped at great expense. I sat down with each of my students and I told them that I did not believe in myself as an artist and that I had made myself sick. I told them I wanted to have them develop healthier narratives around their work as singers.
Speaker 1:By that night, my voice had completely come back and I made it through the concert. Years later, eventually, I was able to let go of that narrative which I had internalized from the very teachers I had respected. You know, voice teachers wield tremendous power and knowledge can easily be used as either a barrier or a weapon. Also, our knowledge is only as useful as our willingness and ability to communicate it. Over my many years of teaching, I've seen students either thrive or wilt as a result of their relationship with a voice teacher.
Speaker 1:Are we aware of this inherent power, and are we willing to circumvent the normal power structures in the student teacher relationship and be vulnerable enough to co create a safe space for learning. And how do we do that without putting ourselves in harm's way? We'll be talking about all of this in episodes to come. I'm thrilled to have as my very first guest doctor Felix Graham, who I consider a dear colleague and friend. Felix is a New York City based musician, writer, and teaching artist artist whose practice explores the juxtaposition of voice, gender, and identity.
Speaker 1:He has had 2 major careers as a performer, initially as a classical singer and pianist, then post transition branching into cabaret slash queer musical theater, which included a role in Decadence where he was the first openly trans masculine singer to perform at the Friars Club. As a choral composer and director, his work explores ensemble singing as performance art, examining the shift in interpretation of the art music canon when performed by gender nonconforming voices and ensembles. His first large scale composition, Stations of the Lost, A Trans Requiem, was written as a subversion of the traditional liturgical memorial. As a teaching artist, Doctor. Graham works with trans gender non conforming singers and gives workshops nationally on trans voice, music and identity, and creating secure musical learning spaces for marginalized communities.
Speaker 1:He is currently the artistic director of Transcend and founder of Transcend Choral and Community Music Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to gender inclusive music and music education in New York City. In addition, Felix has presented at numerous conferences and written many Illuminate Me articles and chapters for various journals and books. Felix, welcome. Thank you. It's so great to have you here, and thank you so much for for sharing this first episode with me.
Speaker 1:It as I said, it feels right in my spirit to to have you here.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure to be here, and I I feel like I feel like this is on brand for our, our history of knowing each other. Right? So I I I feel I feel like we're we're in this together a little bit. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So, as I mentioned, this this episode is really geared, or focused on origin stories. And so I was just wondering if there were any origin stories that you wanted to share that you felt informed your work as a teaching artist.
Speaker 2:Oh, gosh. Everything is narrative. This is this is kind of the underpinning of, like, the work I did for my dissertation, actually, where, you know, we are we are defined to a certain extent to a huge extent, by our narratives, the stories that we tell about ourselves. Right? And so from my perspective, personal narratives are really are really important because they define what we believe we can do.
Speaker 2:They define how we got to where we are and who we are and by extension, what we are capable of doing. Right? And so so, like, they can be, like, very powerful or very well, very powerful in both ways. They can be they can encourage you or they can completely stop you in your tracks. And I have I have a whole bunch of examples of those.
Speaker 2:Like, the one of the very first little ones of that was when I was, but a wee young lad who wanted to, sing musical theater or opera or something. And I kept hearing, oh, you're not loud enough. You can't do that. You don't have the voice for that. And I had started life as a pianist, but hearing you don't have the voice for that, like, just triggered the, oh, yes.
Speaker 2:I do, kind of space and literally pushed me into a voice program instead of a piano program because you can't tell me what to do. You're not my real dad. Right? And it's really funny to me how, like, something as dumb as just that. Somebody say, oh, you're not loud enough to sing opera.
Speaker 2:Right? Can, like, really just change your entire trajectory of life. Right? But, like, another another one of the stories, you know, that that I used to talk about, and I put this on my website, is how I sort of got to where I am through my own voice experience, which is to say that when I was in my twenties and I was doing all my young artist programs and doing the things, I had such a overwhelming amount of anxiety. There was voice dysphoria that I didn't recognize that's what it was at the time because how could you know?
Speaker 2:Right? Unless until something is pointed out to you, obvious things are not always obvious. Right? And I had a bunch of allergies and health things. Just really the the accumulation of, you know, childhood PTSD.
Speaker 2:Right? And so I was at a recording studio to do a, demo for, you know, right, as you do, right, back in the day to remember when you had to send CDs in, and that was the high-tech option. Right? Yes. Right.
Speaker 2:So I was there to record my CD, and I was singing, Mikaela's aria from Carmen. Right? And I'm not sure how familiar you are with it, but there is this line in the middle where, you know, it's big high up to this b flat, this glorious, like, I can do it. This is it. Yes.
Speaker 2:I I have the power. And all of a sudden, voice cracks, and there's nothing there. And so I'm like, okay. So we go back to try it again. Still nothing there.
Speaker 2:Right? And in fact, there's less there with each time. And I have no idea what to do. Like, I'm a little freaked out because I paid what was a metric shit ton of money at the time, right, to be in the studio with the pianist, with the recording engineer. And we did what we could do, but, like, there were there was no high notes.
Speaker 2:There was nothing. Right? And I left, like, literally, like, in tears. I was like, what is what is wrong with me? What is happening?
Speaker 2:Right? And it didn't go away. And, like, it just got worse and worse. And I had all these things to do. Like, I was I was right at that point where my career was, like, I was starting to really be heard, right, as a as a soprano.
Speaker 2:Right? And I I was like, I don't know what to do. I have all of these gigs. I have all of these things waiting, and I I can't make sound. Right?
Speaker 2:And, you know, that was that was sort of the initiation initial experience of what would eventually be diagnosed as MTD. Right? Really anxiety kind of trauma based functional issue, with, you know, reflux and allergies and all kinds of things sitting on top of it. You know, again, you don't know you don't know what problems there are until sometimes they they become, like, really apparent. Right?
Speaker 2:But it it really just it really derailed everything that I had planned to do. Now I could look at that particular origin story as being a woe is me. This is a terrible thing. Blah blah blah. And it took me a little while to get past that particular interpretation of it, but I realized later in life that that little road bump was probably the kindest thing the universe ever did to me.
Speaker 2:Right? Which is to say that by stopping me there and making me have to step back and reconsider, that really started a path towards something that was much better for me, much more fulfilling. I would probably not have transitioned, and I probably would have eventually ended up doing something tragic to myself because of the combination of depression and plus dysphoria. But I'm also, you know, being given patents and rewarded for being high femme. Right?
Speaker 2:It was it was the roadblock that was like, you need to think about what you're doing and why you're doing it, and maybe there's a better path. Right? And on the other hand, too, it also gave me a lot of empathy for people who are struggling with their voices. Right?
Speaker 1:It
Speaker 2:can be very hard to work with voice disorders if you've never had issues with your voice. Right? It's it's there are not words to describe the feeling of the depth of of the despair that it it feels to not have a voice. When you are when you are used to having a voice and you were used to being able to sing and you could you did all of these things with your voice and now suddenly all of that is gone. It is literally an attack oneself.
Speaker 2:Right? And it's you can understand that in a cognitive way, but there is a level of, like, emotionality to that that is very hard to, like, fully grok on a deep level if you've never had experiences like that. Right. So that was an example of, like, it gave me insight into what it's like to have a voice that is non concordant with your identity. Right?
Speaker 2:There is one other little story, though, that I tell. Okay. Yes. And this is this is one of my favorites. It's called the you only need one yes story.
Speaker 2:Right? So when I was originally applying to grad school here, for my first masters, I applied at all the places, the all of the CUNYs, you know, Brooklyn and Hunter and all of the different places, the co here in Copeland, etcetera. And all of them said no. Right? Do you know who said yes?
Speaker 1:Teachers College?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Columbia. Columbia said yes. For whatever reason, they saw something that the other places didn't see. And is it again, how do I interpret that story?
Speaker 2:I could look at it and say, I heard, like, 7 or 8 no's, or I could say I heard a yes. And it only took one yes to get me where I needed to be. I didn't need every one of those people, every one of those schools to say yes. I just needed one that understood who I was and what I was doing and the path that I was on. And, like, that's just such an important thing as a performer, as in the arts, as a teacher, is you only need one yes.
Speaker 2:You don't need everybody to agree with you. You just need that one yes. If you find that one yes, that becomes 2 yeses. That becomes 3 yeses. It becomes 4 yeses.
Speaker 2:So all you need is 1.
Speaker 1:And god knows you're not gonna get everyone on the same page. Oh, no.
Speaker 2:Oh, no. Oh, no. Like, the the the stories I could tell about that whole that whole audition, process. This is back in the, you know, earlier in the 2000, and, things have changed quite for the better since then. But, man, that was a disheartening, depressing experience of of auditions, to be honest.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, you know, having a school that not only just said yes, but is like, actually, we see what you can do, and we're going to push you to do more, right, Was very affirming, and it was like, oh, I'm not dumb. I'm not a failure at things. I just needed someone who wanted what I had to offer.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Thank you for sharing those stories. They're they're incredibly impactful. And and and, you know, I know I've known you for several years, but they teach me new things about you and and, in terms of why you have the integrity you have and, and just kinda underscore how much I appreciate the work you do in the world. I would love for you to now kind of talk about how you empower students to interact with their own origin stories through voice lessons.
Speaker 1:And I'm thinking particularly of in the book, you talked about when you're getting to know a student. You have a very smart way of kind of coaxing out of students, their own origin stories, and I just, would love for you to share that.
Speaker 2:What are the I we we talked about a lot of things, but I think the primary thing that comes to mind in this is the idea of interacting with your voices that were another person. Right? You know, I if you wanna use the real fancy words for it, we're creating a cognitive construct to be able to emotionally connect to an abstract concept because voice voice is abstract. Right? It's this thing we can't see.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We can sort of feel it. We don't know how it works necessarily. It just kind of exists and does its thing. Right?
Speaker 2:I mean, even when you apply all of the science that we know, there's still some mystery about how we get from point a to point b in the ways that we get from point a to point b. Because we can't cut ourselves open and look in real time. You know? We can we can only look after everything is passed, and that does not give you a lot of good information. Right?
Speaker 2:Necessarily. Right? So so there's this there's this feeling of this voice is this other thing. Sometimes I call it floating head syndrome where we sing from here up. Right?
Speaker 2:Because it's we're just sort of disconnected from the idea of our instrument as being a living thing, as being a full part of us. So in the sense that, you know, we're creating a cognitive construct, I have people name their voices. And to interact with their voice like it were a friend rather than a, you belong to me and I am telling you what to do so you better do it, which has honestly never worked on any human in the history of ever. So I don't know why we think it would work on ourselves. Right?
Speaker 2:But here we are. Right? But to like, if your voice has a name and you think of it as having a personality, all of a sudden, you are going to act with compassion, more compassion. You're going to be more understanding. You're going to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 2:And here and this is the most important thing. You start to listen to it because our body has so much to tell us, not just about, you know, in the moment, but also about the past, about about our origins. It tells us, like, how we got to be the person that we are. You know, the the the book probably just comes up. People talk about the body keeps the score.
Speaker 2:That is both a positive and a negative thing. Right? Everything that we experience is stored physiologically in our body. I mean, one of the really things that I like to, you know, really emblazon on people's minds sometimes is that behavior is memory. Right?
Speaker 2:The way we react, the way we do things in the world, that is activated memory. Right? It is the memory of the experiences we've had, the responses that we've had, the consequences that came from those responses, all of those things that we learned, not even as a child, but even into adulthood. All of those things are memory being reenacted. Right.
Speaker 2:And so if we are not listening to our voice, listening to our body, we are missing so many of the cues about why we're doing the things we're doing, what we're doing, how we're doing. Like, we can completely misinterpret those origin stories if we're not getting all of the feedback that we need from our body and from our voice. And, you know, it's a thing to keep in mind that your voice is a part of you, but this is not the same thing as you. Right? We are a loosely a loosely aligned committee on our best day.
Speaker 2:Right? I mean, if you think about it, how often you're walking down the street and your ankle just quits working for a minute, and you're like, what the hell, ankle? Like, who decided that this was your day off? Right? If if we were a single will, we would never need to argue with ourselves.
Speaker 2:Right? So we are this conglomeration of competing needs, desires, etcetera. Probably the easiest way to break it down is to think of voice as part of us that says yes, and we are the part of us that says no. Right? The inhibitory self.
Speaker 2:Right? And there is some inherent conflict between yes and no. Like, one of the examples that comes up a lot with my clients is their their voice wants to assert boundaries. Their voice wants to protect them. Their voice wants to be like, no.
Speaker 2:We're not good with that. But this is like, oh, we can't do that. We couldn't possibly do that. There might be consequences to that. People might not like us.
Speaker 2:Right? And so there's this really intrinsic, like, conflict between what the voice is trying to do and what the mind thinks the voice should do. And oftentimes, we end up at the stalemate because those two parts of the self aren't actually talking to each other. Right? So when we're listening to our body and allowing ourselves to experience alternative interpretations of of events, right, we're getting more information.
Speaker 2:One of the things I, you know, I like to tell my clients is that, you know, if this was couples counseling for your voice, what would your voice want to tell me about your relationship? And you would be shocked or maybe not to know how many people are like, oh, crap. Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:This is not good. I think I'm not very nice to my voice. Right? Right? Right?
Speaker 2:If we think about it, like, sometimes I'll just invite people to sit and think about the things that you think about your voice. Would you say those things to me? Would you say those things to your friends? Because if you wouldn't say them to me or to your friends, why are you saying them to yourself? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? And and I and I'll ask, like, if you said that to your friends, what would happen? Like, oh, I wouldn't have any friends. Well, there you go. And then you're wondering why your voice doesn't wanna work.
Speaker 2:Right? Because because we, you know, we have feelings. We have you know, feelings are chemicals. Right? They're chemicals that affect muscle function.
Speaker 2:Right? This is not a touchy feely kind of thing. This is actual physiology. This is this is neuro neurophysiology, psychology, all of these things together. Right?
Speaker 2:So if we are sometimes I call this and forgive my my cursing. I call it the cycle fakery, right, where you start off, you're worried about your voice being able to do a thing. Right? So you're anxious and you've already created anxious chemicals, which tend to depress muscle function. So you're less likely to be able to do the thing.
Speaker 2:So now you try to do the thing and it doesn't go successfully. Now that's making you more paranoid because it's not doing the thing. So you try to micromanage it more, which creates more frustration, which reduces ability till you reach the point where your voice is just like, I don't know what you want from me. I'm done. I'm going home.
Speaker 2:Right? And we get we just get so frustrated, and you can't stay in that cycle. You have to stop that cycle.
Speaker 1:A feedback loop.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It really is. And the the stopping and interacting with your own story and treating your voice like a person, treating yourself like a person, frankly. Right? It allows you to kind of stop that cycle to understand, oh, this is a thing that I'm doing that is not helping me.
Speaker 2:This is the roadblock. The problem is almost never for the voice. It's only, like, maybe 95% of the time, it is the mind that is the problem. It's it's almost never the voice. Right?
Speaker 2:When the mind is right, the voice is right. Obviously, there are exceptions to that when there's been, you know, physical injuries, where there's certain kinds of habits and things that need to be addressed. But you can't address those things if the mind has not been addressed in those things. Right? If if your tension is coming from your anxiety about how you sound, no amount of exercises I give you is going to fix that tension because you still are anxious about your sound, and that's what's creating the tension.
Speaker 2:So the idea of interacting with your stories and with your voice is a way of reframing your own narratives, being able to be more present, to be more in your body, and to pay attention to how you are or to be mindfully aware of how you are responding to your own cues. And, again, behavior, you know, is memory. The way you treat yourself is often the memory of the experiences that you've had. And so I look at it as an opportunity to invite somebody to step away from those learned experiences and decide, are those experiences actually helping me? And if not, can I choose new experiences that take me further?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You're speaking about, you're starting to to go into my next question because that's what you do, beautifully. And and that is kind of the nuts and bolts of of if somebody has a narrative that they they know they need to overcome, how how do you help them reframe that narrative? I that's one of the things that I I I just wanna underscore from what you said when you were sharing your origin story.
Speaker 1:It's about, you know, there we have stories in our lives, and there are different ways that we can see them, and we may see them in different ways depending on where we are in our life. Right? Yeah. So what are some ways that you help clients move past just accepting the narrative as one particular in one particular way and moving it to something else that may allow them to to to let go in a in a meaningful way?
Speaker 2:So there's several paths we can take towards that. The first one that I often start with is imagine that you did not have this thought or belief. How would your life change? What would you be doing differently? Right?
Speaker 2:If you if you chose to believe something else about this. Right? What do you think might change for yourself? Usually, the answers are things like, oh, I would probably sing with more confidence. I would probably not care so much about what people think about me.
Speaker 2:I would probably be happier while I'm singing. Right? So first, we're identifying what are the outcomes. Right? Are those preferable outcomes?
Speaker 2:Right? If you want those things, yes, then we need to do something to get there. Then the second is kind of identifying, and this is this is where, I I I love to borrow tools from other modalities. And this was a really great one from something called cognitive processing therapy, which is a modality that was developed to deal with complex PTSD rather than acute. Like, so if acute PTSD is I I saw, you know, I got shot in NAM, and now every time I hear a sound, I have a flashback, whatever.
Speaker 2:That's acute PTSD. Right? But complex PTSD is really sort of the accumulation of trauma over time. Right? You can think of it as there's big t trauma and little t trauma.
Speaker 2:And normally, little t trauma is not a problem except that when it often frequently recurs or there's other things compounding it. And then over time, that little t becomes a big t in the sense of it becoming a roadblock. Now trauma does not always mean, like, terrible things that we need to take to a therapist or whatever. It can literally just be the accumulation of stress to a point where we feel like we are disenfranchised and don't have any ownership in our lives. Right?
Speaker 2:So trauma is not just a medical term in this case. It is it is the accumulation of experiences that negatively affect our capacity to make decisions and to take action. Right? So there's this particular, particular modality, as I said, some, cognitive processing therapy that helps to work on what they call stuck points. These are, like, beliefs or things that you have internalized that are holding you back in some way.
Speaker 2:Right? And there's a really great worksheet that I love to work through, with folks because, again, a tool is a tool. How you use it is what matters. Right? And one of the things we try to identify is what are your vocal stuck points?
Speaker 2:What are the things that you believe about your voice, about your singing that may or may not be helping you? They're things that feel uncomfortable, that give you uncomfortable experiences. Right? And that keep you from doing other things. Right?
Speaker 2:And so we try to identify it. Okay. What is the stuck point? How does it make you feel? How does it affect your behavior?
Speaker 2:Let me get into, like, the really important stuff is where does that belief come from? Do you have evidence for that belief? Is the source of that evidence a trustworthy source? Is it possible that this belief I have is an example of a cognitive distortion, like all or nothing thinking, like black and white? It's either all of this or none of this.
Speaker 2:And once you kind of break down that belief, right, people are often empowered to start making changes almost immediately. Right? It is not something that has to, oh, we need months to do this. It's, oh, I've identified the problem. I now see the issue.
Speaker 2:I can take a different path. You know, it's like example of taking a looking at your your behavior, your memory behavior, and trying to understand why am I doing this and realizing that, oh, this is not a behavior that serves me anymore. It might be a behavior that helped me in the past, but it is certainly not helping me now. So I can choose to go in a different direction. Right?
Speaker 2:I can, you know, I can talk about this thing in different terms. I am not beholden to this one narrative or this one belief. I can look at it, and I can understand it. And I can even say, hey. I I used to believe that, but I don't think I believe that anymore.
Speaker 2:Right? It's really just forcing people to actively interact with their own story.
Speaker 1:You know, I think one of the things that I I perceive voice teachers sometimes have find themselves reticent around is this idea of, like, okay. Well, this gets into territory that's more like a licensed therapist, and I don't wanna cross a line and, like which which, of course, we understand. That's not our that's not our, portfolio of gifts. Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:But one of the things that I'm receiving from what you're sharing is that, you know, this is you're not asking about the the you're not asking specifics in a way that I think a therapist would. Right? You're you're kind of coming at it in a very scientific method, kind of scientific approach. Right? That is that is, I think, different from, from the perception sometimes of what voice teachers may have.
Speaker 1:Do you have anything that you wanna share in terms of what you're talking about and how you keep it within the realm of creating a boundaried, healthy relationship?
Speaker 2:Yes. So I have a whole bunch of things to say about that as you probably would have imagined. The first is that that we are it is a better term rather than to think of it as therapeutic or whatever. There's a difference between a therapist who is helping you figure out you and is and is in is trying to figure out, like, what's going on that would affect you in a physiological way, etcetera, versus what a counselor or a coach does. I I think of it a little bit as the counselor or coach is giving you activities to move forward.
Speaker 2:Right? A therapist is hearing and helping you put together those pieces so that you can understand the places where you need to move forward. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And the your the people who come to me so I don't I do more than just voice teaching work. I also do, like, coaching around, like, neurodivergent, you know, success, like ADHD, like planning how to how to be successful if that, like, artistic counseling, like and, you know, sort of teacher mentoring, a lot of different things in kind of this area. I understand myself to be an anthropologist who simply works through the lens of voice. Right? Voice can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people.
Speaker 2:So, I like I like to have all of the ingredients in the stew. But the point is that when when you're working with me, I'm here to give you tools to help you move forward. Generally speaking, people have come to voice lessons or to coachings or whatever because they have identified that there's a problem. They already understand that there's a roadblock. Our goal goal is how do we move from there?
Speaker 2:How do we get from there? So for me, that comes to, again, back to the I delimit myself to the things that are affecting your voice. Okay. If we uncover things that are big, and stressful, whatever, in this process, I have absolutely no problem. They'll say, hey.
Speaker 2:That sounds like something you need to take to your therapist. Right? I think you need to work through that because what we there is there's an intimacy to the voice teacher client relationship, right, that puts you in a place where you have access to a lot of emotional experiences and things that a therapist might not even have access to unless a lot of rapport has been developed. Right? Sure.
Speaker 2:And so I I want to walk a line between it is absolutely okay for you to tell me these things or to express these things if you feel you need to do that. And also with the boundary of saying, me being able to say, hey. I may not be in a space to deal with this today. You know, I don't want you to feel like you have to hold this in, etcetera. So this seems like something you should probably take to your therapist to talk to about.
Speaker 2:Just today, I don't have the bandwidth to be able to help you in a meaningful way, right, to listen or whatever it is you need to do. But but, again, it's redirecting the things that need to go to the therapist. And then also from that is is, again, like I said, I I am sticking to the things that are related to voice. So that's things like motivation. That's things like anxiety, performance anxiety around.
Speaker 2:And performance anxiety isn't about performance. It's just about life. It's just anxious living. Right? The ways in which and sometimes we do talk about, like, trying to figure out, okay, how did you come to this belief about your voice?
Speaker 2:How did you come to this belief about your personal efficacy? Right? That, oh, I can do this or I can't do this. Right? Because, again, we at the end of the day, no mechanical exercises I give someone is going to fix a person who can't do something because they believe they're intrinsically incapable of it.
Speaker 2:Right? And so by using the voice to speak through these things and to kind of identify where those stuck points are, that usually has the effect of freeing the person up to at least try the thing. Yeah. Right? And there's so, again, you know, there there's several different things to keep in mind with this is that part of what I'm doing as a coach, counselor, teacher, whatever you want to talk about, are often the things that going to a therapist, the therapist is not going to address because it's not their wheelhouse.
Speaker 2:They it it does not occur in any of my I've had some wonderful therapists over my lifetime, friends who are therapists, etcetera. It has never occurred in any of our conversations about these things for them to ask, okay. How does that affect your voice? Right. Right?
Speaker 2:Because that's not their wheelhouse. Sure. Right? Right. But that is mine.
Speaker 2:Right? To understand, okay, what are the roadblocks? What are the things that are keeping? Now, ideally, a lot of these things are stuff that, okay, we've identified the problem in the voice. That seems to have a deeper issues that you need to take back to your therapist and that you need to work out there.
Speaker 2:Right? But but I have the opportunity to shine a light or mirror the behaviors and actions and thoughts that people have around their voice. And those tend to be thoughts and beliefs and feelings that they have around themselves as a person. Right? Because voice is part of our core concept.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And then one other little thing with it, there are actually tools for this. So one of the things there's been research around, is the there's an adaptation of something that's called, acceptance and commitment therapy. Right? It's a modality to deal with anxiety, you know, fusion, like, where you are fused to, like, a maladaptive thought, etcetera.
Speaker 2:And there is a mode a version of that that has been adapted for coaches, teachers, even applied, like, music teachers to use to help clients. Right? There's some research about this, and it has actually shown a fair amount of efficacy. Right? Because, again, the point is not therapeutic.
Speaker 2:It's about creating actions. It's about giving people tools to use that are active in the moment. Right? And so I think I think I think if you stay through the lens of what is my lane. Right?
Speaker 2:What what am I qualified to help with? What am I what what do I have the experience and capacity? And and this is a thing. This is a question that you have to actually ask because if you are if you are going into very, like, emotional territory with someone around their voice, you need to have tools to help them get back to the surface. Right?
Speaker 2:If if if you're addressing, okay, this deep seated feeling of my voice will never be good enough. Okay? Now that's obviously going to be a thing that has deeper deeper tentacles that need to go to a therapist. Right? Because voice is just a stand in for me in that point.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:But that that thing is going to come up in lessons because it is intrinsic to what you're doing. Right? Those feelings are going to come out because when we go to seeing, we are essentially reducing the inhibitory quality of the prefrontal cortex to allow the voice to to convey emotions, to convey what's happening. So we sing. We're triggered by these feelings that come up when we sing.
Speaker 2:Those things come out in the voice. Those things come out in the psyche, and they sit in the room. They they're they're like the gigantic pink elephant. Right? And they have to be addressed.
Speaker 2:But you also have to understand how to get somebody back into a place where they can go about their day or they leave you. They don't feel like they've been rubbed emotionally raw and have not been given any tools to help them manage those feelings.
Speaker 1:This is I I as I said, I knew you were the exact right person to to call first.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate
Speaker 1:that. Oh my gosh. Thank you. And, I don't wanna, to I wanna be a good steward of your time. But before we, sign off, I just wanted to ask you, is there, you know, anything you wanna share in terms of what you're working on or how people can can reach you and and find out about your scholarship?
Speaker 2:Oh, great. So, I have a lot of things going on. Probably the best way to find me is at Felix, f e l I x, dash graham.com. That's my personal website. You can also find me on the interwebs as it were with, sing at drfelix.
Speaker 2:Right? So that's that's me on Instagram. That's I also have a website, sing with doctor felix. Dotcom for my voice lessons. But all of my stuff is there.
Speaker 2:I have a bunch of things coming up. I've got several chapters coming out. I have, I direct a, trans choir in New York. Well, actually, we have a couple choirs now, but, at a nonprofit. I run a nonprofit called the, Transcend Choral and Community Music Foundation.
Speaker 2:There we go. Right. So that's some of the work that I'm doing there. I'm also working on my 2nd off Broadway show. Hopefully, it didn't premiere next, next year.
Speaker 2:Fingers crossed. Can't share all of the details yet, but, this is gonna be a full, like, a full scale. I'm calling it an operatory. So and and I want to bring you know, I'm working on bringing theater and choral music kind of together in in a conglomeration because I I understand choral music to be performance art. Right?
Speaker 2:It is absolutely a form of performance art. Right? So so many things going on, choir, research, teaching, coaching, and writing. Everything's on my website. Sorry about that.
Speaker 2:Right? So, felixdashgram.com or sing with drfelix.com.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing those things. And and Yes, ma'am. I, you know, I from firmly believe that we have a portfolio of gifts, and Mhmm. I am grateful to be witness to yours, in lots of different ways. And thank you again for your time today.
Speaker 1:Really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. But the next time we get together, I need to hear more of your origin stories.
Speaker 1:Absolute. Well, you'll tune in for this first episode because I'm sharing 3.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. So there you go. Yes. I I do I do one of your your the cabaret that you did recently was a lovely example of an origin story made active. Right?
Speaker 2:So, looking forward to that.
Speaker 1:Thank you. And for those who of you who are interested, it's, sing happy. If you go to YouTube, you can, put my name in, and then, Sing Happy. It kind of talks a little bit, a little bit more about one of the origin stories I shared in this in this podcast. Again, Felix, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:One final story for you. I had advanced a couple rounds as a candidate for a full time position at what most consider one of the top 3 musical theater programs in the country. One of my colleagues happened to be on the selection committee, and they gave me the final prompt. Name your clients and tell us how you made them successful. I was thrown by the question, and I attempted to answer it in a philosophical way.
Speaker 1:I said, you know, one of the great things about a performing arts degree is that it offers many transferable skills. And I told them that some of the students of whom I was most proud were actually in the industry per se. They found their voice as early childhood educators, music therapists, and entrepreneurs. The head of the committee leaned in and said, I'm going to give you an opportunity to answer that again. Name your clients and tell us how you made them successful.
Speaker 1:I withdrew my name from consideration within minutes of completing the interview. I also terminated contact with that colleague on the selection committee. These are some of my origin stories, some of the reasons I decided I wanted to write a book and start this podcast. They are very human stories that feature teachers who probably didn't intend to make harm or create harm. Have I created harm as a teacher?
Speaker 1:Yes, I have, and it is the reason that I'm daily reminded that teaching is a practice just like singing, and I hope to use my research and this podcast to explore ways we can all practice it better, ways that we can all be more effective transformative teachers for our students. The Canadian poet and author Margaret Atwood once said, in the end, we'll all become stories. Well, what's your origin story? What are the stories you hope others will tell about you? Sound off.
Speaker 1:You can email me at wholeheartedvoicepedagogygmail.com, or you can find me on most socials. My handle on most platforms is Cisco songs and also at Wholehearted Voice Pedagogy. And please subscribe to this podcast on whatever corner of the interweb you found me. I'll be releasing new episodes every 2 weeks, and you won't wanna miss some of the very phenomenal guests I have lined up. More soon.
Speaker 1:Take care of you.
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